


Nil, Ergo Cogitamus

by TUNiU



Series: Recovery is a Spiral [2]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Clone Blues, Episode: s02e06 The Sound of Thunder, M/M, PTSD, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:14:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27536620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TUNiU/pseuds/TUNiU
Summary: Set in a nebulous timeframe right after Hugh Culber is retrieved from the mycelial plane. The show's version of his emotional journey was gut-wrenching. So here's another way it could happen. Featuring ptsd, psychological distress and a different type of confrontation with Ash Tyler.
Relationships: Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets
Series: Recovery is a Spiral [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018074
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	Nil, Ergo Cogitamus

Hugh Culber was grateful to be alive, he truly was. Not only that, he was grateful to be alive in the starship Discovery, instead of just alive in the Mycelial Realm. The rational part of his mind--the part that had trained in medicine for a decade--knew that the trauma surrounding his nine month stint in pure survival mode, against an atmosphere that kept trying to decompose him alive, wasn’t just going to go away now that he was back in normal space. The other part of him truly believed that if he could just get a routine, if he could immerse himself back into the life he used to live, everything would just be fine and he could forget. To that end, Hugh had spent his now copious free time re-establishing himself into his own life.

His first few weeks back on the ship didn’t count. From the days spent in sickbay being poked and prodded and scanned and sampled as the science and medical divisions worked to prove he was Hugh Culber--back from the dead--to the days he spent in bed, in a quiet near-comatose state of alternating terror and safety (most often clinging obsessively to Paul); the first several weeks of being back on Discovery passed like a gauzy dream. He had had to inch his way into cognizance in spurts aided by Paul’s infinite patience. 

Paul could spend an entire day in silence, holding Hugh tightly as he tried to hide from the light or the dark or whatever horrible entity had wormed its way into Hugh’s imagination. On the good days, they had sat on the bed, surrounded by the pillows and blankets. On the bad days, they had sat in a corner, on the floor, behind a table tipped over to hide them from the doorway. Paul had just held him, so tight, and rocked him, making Hugh feel so safe.

But eventually Paul’s leave had run out and he had to return to work. The first several days they were separated, Hugh spent nestled in a corner, alone. Waiting. But now Hugh felt an expectation of expectations. He felt he should just walk out their door and get out there. Maybe greet the two or three people out of a hundred who hadn’t been “just passing through” to visit him in sickbay upon his arrival.

Hugh lay in the dark of his quarters. Wanting to go out. Wanting to stay. For nine months, he had wanted to go home, he wanted everything he used to have. Now he was home, and he could have everything he wanted, and he just had to get up. He just had to walk out of his and Paul’s quarters. 

Hugh turned over in bed. Paul’s pillow was long cold, his dip in the mattress long risen. The sheets on that side still smelled like him though. Hugh breathed in deep, and again. He inhaled Paul’s scent, immersing his mind in the sense-feeling-memory of love-safety-paul.

“Computer,” he said, his voice cracking. “Lights to maximum,” he commanded.

The lights in the room brightened. Around every crevice and shadow, Hugh expected a floating spore to emerge. Nothing came. There was just the bed, the nightstands, the chairs and table. No tiny little wisp of decomposing pain came floating from the bathroom or the closet or up the sink drain. 

Time passed. It took a long while for Hugh to convince himself that nothing was coming to attack him. But eventually he stood up out of bed because he had to go to the bathroom. After he pulled back up his pants, he found himself at the sink, wondering why it was important. His mind flooded with shame. He’d forgotten the washing hands portion of going to the bathroom. For nine months he hadn’t had a sink. Hugh turned back and flushed the toilet, then he washed his hands.

The lights were starting to scare him. But he didn’t want to tell the computer to change the illumination so soon after changing it the first time. He didn’t want to appear indecisive. He jumped back into bed and curled up on Paul’s side. More time passed. Hugh got hungry. Paul was at work, fixing the ship. He couldn’t call him to fetch him lunch, because he would stop everything to get the food. Paul had to fix the ship, it was important. And Hugh could get his own food. He just had to get dressed and go to the mess hall. Through several corridors and corners, where spore swarms could be lurking.

Hugh was hungry.

He could eat from his in-room replicator, but that would mean staying in his quarters, for yet another day. Or he could go out. He knew he couldn’t hide forever, though he really wanted to. He also really didn’t want to. He rolled out of bed, and nearly pushed the sliding closet door off its track in his hurry. He dressed himself quickly in a shirt and pants, then found himself grabbing a hoodie from Paul’s side of the closet. It was a very tight fit, but it was already so holey at the hem and cuffs, one more hole at a shoulder seam wouldn’t make a difference. The fabric smelled like Paul.

Hugh made sure to grab his badge on his way out of the room. He may not have full systems access yet for his personnel log-in, but the badge was a good enough transponder to make the replicators work. He put the badge into the pouch at the front of the hoodie. He debated putting the hood up to absolutely surround himself in love-safety-paul, but the fabric would shutter his peripheral vision. He needed to be able to see.

He took two steps outside the quarters, just far enough that the door would automatically swish shut. The corridor was brightly lit. The occasional crewman wandered by, going someplace that wasn’t where he was. Just passing through. He walked down the corridor, one step after another, one breath after another. In, out, step, step.

He entered the turbolift and commanded the system. “Mess hall,” he said, his voice croaky from disuse.

The carriage went up and down and left and right as it navigated towards the exit closest to the mess-hall. The doors opened and he exited.

Breathe, step.

Breathe, step.

Breathe, step.

No spores came floating around the corners to eat him alive.

He walked into the mess hall. Conversation stopped as various crewmen saw him enter. He kept his hands clenched in his pocket. He kept his eyes on the forward bulkhead, where the replicator systems were, as he passed by each table. When he reached the proximity sensor, the replicator pinged his badge transponder and recognized his current dietary restrictions. But even within the guidelines Doctor Pollard had given his brand new body, Hugh found his options overwhelming. 

The replicator bleeped, impatiently.

“I don’t,” he began, then he took a deep breath and said, “Choose a random lunch, based on my requirements, in a travel container.” It was easy to talk to a machine, he found. He just needed to be precise, emotionless.

The replicator provided a bento box and thermos. Hugh took it, spun on his heel and walked out of the mess hall all without checking what food he received. It didn’t matter what it was, the food would be nutritionally sound. After nine months of mushrooms and tree bark, Hugh believed he would eat anything.

When he made it back to his quarters, the lights startled him. He’d left them on the brightest setting. 

“Lights off,” he shouted.

The door swished shut behind him, cutting off the corridor illumination and leaving him in pure darkness. All he saw were the phosphene ghosts in his eyes. He stood still, just breathing into the darkness. He could see nothing. Only when he was sure there were no spore lights anywhere around him, did he say, “lights, low.”

The room brightened softly. It was barely enough to see by. The shadows were deep and dark. Hugh stuck the thermos under his arm and grabbed the blanket off the bed. He nestled himself on the floor in the corner behind the table. The thermos had unsweet tea. His bento box had beans with zucchini and steak. He found the cutlery snapped into place on the underside of the lid. He didn’t bother cutting his steak. It was a small portion to begin with, and he just skewered it on the tines of his fork and ate it by ripping pieces off with his teeth. Table manners hadn’t been important to him for those nine months.

Time passed, marked by the diminishing of his food. When he finished, he crawled back into bed, dragging the blanket with him, leaving his dishes on the floor.

The padd on Paul’s bedside table flickered on. The screen pulsed with an incoming message. The sudden light startled Hugh, and he froze for a moment, nestled in bed. All the padd did was blink with a message. It would continue to blink until someone opened the missive. Hugh stretched his arm out from beneath his covers and snatched the padd to himself. 

He swiped at the screen, and the padd display changed from the standard lock screen to Paul’s personalized wallpaper. It was a picture of the two of them from a few years ago. Justin Straal must have taken it, because it was Paul and Hugh leaning against one another on a couch in the Departures lounge at Deneva Spacedock, right before their dual posting to the USS Discovery, and Straal’s posting to the USS Glenn. In the image, Paul’s jacket was half unzipped, because he still hadn’t gotten used to the neckline of the Starfleet uniform. His arm was around Hugh’s waist. The picture didn’t show it, but Hugh knew in that moment: Paul had been complaining at how unfair it was that Hugh looked so amazing in his white uniform.

The message icon still blinked and Hugh tapped it.

> _“Tilly said you got lunch today from the mess hall. :D Proud of you.”_

The message was from Paul, though Hugh didn’t know who had taught him the emoticon. Paul had never used emoticons before. Hugh didn’t remember seeing Tilly in the mess hall, though he must have blindly walked past her. He wanted to type out a reply to Paul, but he could find no words. So he settled for a **:/** which he sent back to Paul. It seemed an accurate description of his feelings right now. He both had too many words and not enough words. Too many emotions and not enough emotions. He didn’t know how to speak to Paul in words. He didn’t know which words would make Paul have which reaction. It was like he was performing a play with no script. He didn’t know the path to take for the best outcome. He didn’t even know what the best outcome was.

He did know to perform an apology when rude, so he tapped at the padd screen. He brought up the crew messaging system and opened a channel to Tilly’s account. He typed up, “sorry I didn’t say hi, not feeling up to much right now,” and sent it off.

Immediately, his padd lit up a response. “ _No worries, you take care of you right now_ ,” the message read, but it was from Keyla Detmer. Her text box nestled itself under his original missive.

Another message appeared, from Jett Reno. It said, _“take your time.”_

More and more messages appeared. One after another, each reply graphically chaining themselves to his original. Oh. He’d opened a channel to everyone’s accounts by accident. It seemed like everyone was answering him. They all had something to say, whether it be in actual words or just a thumbs up, or heart icon.

A read alert appeared. There was no message attached to the name.

* * *

When Ash Tyler’s padd pinged with an incoming message, he was quite puzzled. He wasn’t expecting anyone from the ship to ever talk to him. Ever. His colleagues from Section 31 would have used a secure channel on his far more secure custom padd, not the one handed to him by Discovery’s quartermaster. He was sitting at his desk, alone in his private quarters. Being an operative did have its perks: better equipment and a single occupant room on board the ship. Not that anyone would want to room with him. He didn’t blame them. He didn’t want to room with himself either. When he wasn’t reviewing secure communiques and coordinating efforts between section 31 and the Discovery, he was sat alone in his room: contemplating his own existence. Trapped with his own fractured psyche. A Klingon double agent who got so infected by his human cover that he mentally broke and had to excise the Klingon half to survive.

So when his padd chimed with the new missive, Ash leapt at the distraction. He dropped the padd he was working on, and grabbed up the blinking device. He swiped past the screens until he got to the message. 

> From Hugh Culber: _“Sorry I didn’t say hi, not feeling up to much right now.”_

Ash startled. He felt a chill, as though someone had walked over his grave, both his graves. Was this a joke? Was it some cosmic tease? His one-time murder victim leaving him a note. His padd chimed with several messages in a row.

> From Keyla Detmer: “ _No worries, you take care of you right now.”_
> 
> From Jett Reno: “ _take your time._ ”
> 
> From Sylvia Tilly: “ _:)”_
> 
> From Bill Hudson: “ _it’s okay, we love you.”_

Oh. Each reply nestled themselves under Hugh’s original message because he had sent the missive to everyone on board the ship. Ash tapped at the screen to load the keyboard letters. What could be even say to that? " _Sorry I killed you, I was klingon at the time, glad you’re feeling better?_ " Anything he sent would be read by everyone. What right did he have? And to be fair, there were no words a murderer could possibly say to his victim to make anything better. He snarled, disgusted at himself. He clicked the volume buttons on his padd until it went to silent mode, then he flipped it screen down onto his desk. He didn’t want to see anymore of the crew’s sympathetic replies to Hugh. He didn’t have the right to any part of Hugh’s life, no matter how small.

He got back to work on his analysis of the data from Section 31.

It was a few short minutes later that Ash’s door chimed for an entry request. Thinking he could use the stretch, he stood up, walked over to the door and waved his hand at the panel: opening the door manually, instead of with a verbal command to the computer.

The door swished open, revealing Hugh Culber standing in the corridor beyond. Ash took a step back. Neither of them said anything. The door stayed open between them since they were both standing within the sensor bubble.

Ash looked Hugh over, cataloguing the differences in the man since---since he’d killed him. Hugh looked sharper; every edge defined by a loss of extra.

“You’re bleeding,” Ash noticed. 

Small streams of blood wove their way through the fingers of Hugh’s right hand from where it was clenched around a cracked padd. The framing pieces were obtusely bent and the glass had fractured into shards which bit into Hugh’s palm. The blood dripped down from his hand and made a small puddle on the decking.

“I think I want to kill you,” Hugh admitted, almost surprised at himself. His other hand compulsively rubbed at his neck.

Ash stepped to the side to clear the doorway and said, “you better come inside, then.”

“What?”

“Well, you don’t want anyone to stop you, do you?” Ash pointed out.

Hugh entered the room. The door slid shut behind him. More blood dripped to the floor. Ash turned his back to Hugh and stepped to the replicator. His section 31 badge allowed him a larger variety of replicator patterns, even those locked to certain professions. He called up a small regenerator and a towel. The items coalesced into existence on the replicator platter. He took the items in hand.

“You can have a seat,” he told Hugh, who hadn’t taken the opportunity presented and attacked Ash with his back turned.

Hugh sat at the table. He rested his hand, still gripping the padd, on the tabletop. Ash sat next to him and reached for Hugh’s hand. Hugh pulled back defensively.

Ash looked at him askance, both understanding Hugh's reticence and disbelieving they were both even in this situation. “You can’t exactly kill me with a busted hand,” he said rationally.

Hugh opened his hand. The padd pieces separated and clattered to the table. Ash made no move to grab them away from Hugh. He just held Hugh’s hand in his own, with the towel between their hands. He used a corner to gently wipe away the excess blood from Hugh’s palm, before slowly running the regenerator over the jagged wounds.

Hugh flinched. Ash instinctively tightened his grip to keep Hugh’s hand in the healing field.

“Ow,” Hugh said shocked.

“Yes, well, I’m no doctor,” Ash admitted.

“It hurts.” Hugh ripped his hand out of Ash’s. He cradled his still bloody, barely healed hand in his other. He poked at the wound and winced. Then he poked it again, keeping pressure against the layers of exposed dermis. He looked to Ash with pain in his eyes, but also wonder.

Ash sighed. He nodded and said, “it sucks when all you can feel is pain.”

“There’s something wrong with me,” Hugh admitted.

“Yes,” Ash agreed. 

Hugh looked betrayed.

Ash continued, saying, “you’re sitting next to the man who murdered you, and you haven’t attacked me yet.”

Hugh shook his head.

“No, don’t shy away now. It’s what you came here to do.” Ash sat calmly in his seat. “How are you going to kill me?”

Hugh clenched his fist so that his nails dug into his still bleeding palm. “I thought I would beat your face in,” he admitted sheepishly. “Then maybe strangulation. You’re too tall for me to break _your_ neck easily.”

“I’m sitting down right now. You want to give it a go? I won’t stop you.”

Hugh signed despondently. He seemed to lose all the vitality he’d had for those few seconds. “No,” he told Ash.

“I’m the man who murdered you, I would have killed everyone aboard this ship. Come on! Let it out!”

“If I can forgive a species that tried to eat me for nine months,” Hugh said woodenly, like it was something he’d told himself over and over. “I can forgive you for a two minute lapse due to brainwashing.”

Ash snarled with disappointment. “Read the report, I’m a Klingon talking from a dead man’s lips. _Ash_ wasn’t the sleeper agent, Voq was.”

“Wait, they left you in Starfleet?” Hugh asked, puzzled.

“Yeah, well, guess they thought they could use me cuz I’m a Klingon who prefers to be human... But everything left from the original Ash Tyler was chucked into some Klingon trash bin.”

“My corpse is floating through space,” Hugh offered in commiseration.

“So here we are,” Ash complained bitterly. “Copies of ourselves.” 

“How do you function?” Hugh asked desperately.

* * *

Paul Stamets was busy realigning the myriad junction connectors that had been dislodged during their aborted entry into the mycelial plane, so he missed the creation of Hugh’s ship-wide message thread by half an hour. Several of the crew had used the “reply all” function, so by the time he had gotten to check his padd, his unread messages numbered in the several dozen. He instructed the computer to run a diagnostic on his work and sat down for a small rest at the operations console. Climbing through jeffries tubes was a young man’s game and he was not that young anymore. He idly scrolled through to the top of the messages on his screen as he twisted his back from side to side.

He saw Hugh’s original, _“sorry I didn’t say hi, not feeling up to much right now._ ” He had no idea who it had been meant for, but it seemed the entire crew had got it and replied along the lines of _“it’s okay, we love you,_ ” which was an actual message from the ship's quartermaster. 

Then his eyes fell upon, _“read by Ash Tyler 13:51.”_ There was no message attached to the notice.

A great sense of unease flowed through Paul. He sent through a request to call the padd in his quarters, wanting Hugh to answer it. The call rang and rang but there was no answer.

“Computer,” he asked the ship. “Locate Doctor Culber.”

 _“Doctor Culber is in Lieutenant Tyler’s quarters_ ,” the computer answered.

“What?”

“ _Doctor Culber is in Lieutenant Tyler’s quarters,_ ” the computer answered again. 

Paul got up and ran out of engineering. He didn’t stop running as he passed and burst through groups of people walking the corridors. He only stopped running when his feet slid slightly under him as he reached Ash Tyler’s door. He caught himself against the wall and looked down to see what he’d slipped on.

There was a small puddle of blood on the floor.

Paul didn’t even bother ringing the chime. He just started banging on the door, crazily. The door slid open under his fist and he burst into the room. Ash sat, running a regenerator over Hugh’s hand. They were both sitting at the table, existing together calmly like they weren't murderer and victim.

Hugh turned to Paul.

“You can’t be here,” Paul told him. “Please;" his voice cracked.

“It's okay,” Ash said softly.

“Get away from him,” Paul said. He’d meant it to come out menacing. It just sounded hollow and pleading.

Ash told Hugh, “maybe you _should_ go.”

Hugh had barely stood up before Paul’s hand was on his shoulder pushing him out of the room and into the ship’s corridor. Only when they were several dozen meters from Ash’s door, did Paul stop pushing Hugh.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked. “I’ll kill him.”

“No. It’s….we talked.”

“What could you possibly have to talk to him about?”

Hugh shrugged, closed off. His arms crossed over his chest.

Paul reached out and squeezed at Hugh’s elbows. He said, “I know it's not easy, but you can talk to me?”

“It's not easy--to talk to you.”

Paul’s heart broke. “Oh.”

Hugh immediately unclenched his stance. He grabbed Paul’s hands and opened both of their arms wide. He stepped forward into Paul’s embrace and held tight to him, with his arms wrapped around his back. Paul’s hands came up under his arms and held on as well.

“This is easy,” Hugh explained badly, holding on tightly. “This is what I want, forever.” He buried his face in Paul’s neck. The uniform collar was rough and caught against his beard.

“I can do this.”

“But I need to get better, and he got it.”

“No.” Paul shook his head against Hugh’s skin. “Got what?”

“What it’s like to be remade.”

Paul hugged Hugh tighter, keening softly in wounded despair.

Hugh felt safe. He just wanted to stand here forever, holding Paul. In silence, Hugh couldn’t get the interaction wrong. He couldn’t say the wrong thing if he wasn’t speaking. But Paul had to finish his shift. Eventually, Hugh broke the hug. He interlaced his fingers in Paul’s and let Paul walk him back to their quarters. 

Paul stumbled in the lowest lighting of their room, while Hugh navigated the obstacles easily. He was used to walking around their quarters in pure darkness, whenever he had to command the computer to lower the lights because he needed to see if any spores would float around glowing in the blackness. Hugh sat on the edge of the bed, while Paul stood nearer the doorway, keeping a clear path between him and the entrance so he could exit without turning on the lights.

“I’ll be okay,” Hugh told him. He smiled. Maybe he was lying. He wasn’t sure. 

“Are you sure?” Paul asked.

“Yeah.”

There was just enough light to see the shadows of things. Paul stumbled his way forward in the darkness, until his knees smushed up against the mattress. He reached out with his hand and met Hugh’s arm. He followed it up until he was caressing Hugh’s neck and cheek. Then he bent down and kissed Hugh, softly, sweetly.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised.

“Okay.”

Paul turned and left their room, trailing one hand against the wall on his way to the doorway. The door swished open, letting in all the light from the ship’s corridors. The door closed, leaving Hugh in a false pure darkness caused by the temporary ruining of his night vision.

“Computer, replicate a padd,” he commanded.

The replicator on the wall bleeped. The platter lit up with pixelating sparks. It was slow enough, and he was fast enough, that just by the light of the object materializing into existence, he was able to walk to the device and retrieve the padd. The platter darkened. He tapped the screen, letting the device sync with his transponder. Once his account was loaded, he scrolled through his messages until he got back up to the entry: “ _read by Ash Tyler 13:51_ ”. A tap on Ash’s name brought up an options menu: 

_Call Ash Tyler_

_Message Ash Tyler_

He sat down on the bed in the dark and debated with himself.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know latin. and google is no type of help. I was aiming for a bastardization of Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am).
> 
> Nil, Ergo Cogitamus, hopefully translates to (Nothing, therefore we think). Because both Hugh and Ash have severe issues with being new men and what it all means for them now.


End file.
